


Knight Terrors

by saintsrow2



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Moon Knight (Comics)
Genre: Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 08:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19169425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsrow2/pseuds/saintsrow2
Summary: During their time together as mercenaries, Marc Spector was an emotionless stone-cold killer, good at what he did and unwavering in his duty. He didn't ever need to take time to be scared or to cry... Or so Frenchie thought.





	Knight Terrors

When Marc Spector is in the field, gun in his hand, he looks indomitable. He's one of the youngest in the team, but has a cold attitude that's on par with any of the veterans of Bushman's group. He's a killer though and through. Jean-Paul likes him. He barely knows him, but while Marc might have the professionalism of a veteran, he doesn't have their abrasive toxic nihilism, and he laughs at Jean-Paul's jokes. That's enough, for a place where you're already putting your life on the line every day, to consider someone your friend. 

But they're not close. Not in the way most people would think good friends need to be. They don't know each other's secrets or pasts. They have never seen each other outside of the cycle of fatigues, work, travel, R&R in shitty local bars where Marc would typically fall into bed with the first woman who looked at him and Jean-Paul would wait until he was alone to slink away to find people more appealing to his tastes. They had gotten blackout drunk a hundred times. They had never discussed their parents. They did not talk about a school or home or the people they left behind to come out to this foreign land and kill. Jean-Paul has never seen Marc cry. 

Until now. 

It's so quiet that night, out in the desert where the days are hot enough to burn the hair off your skin and the nights are cold and desolate enough to make you profoundly aware of how small and lost you are in the world, that the disruption of Marc's breathing is enough to make Jean-Paul wake up with a start. It helps that he is on constant high alert since he started out in the military, the fear every small noise in the dark would be the last thing he ever heard ingrained into him. 

When Jean-Paul wakes up, with a sharp jolt as his dream is snapped away from him in an instant, he immediately knows that something is wrong. Marc is thrashing in his sleep, kicking at something that isn't there, or at least isn't there anymore. He's trapped in his sleeping bag, unable to free himself from its confines, lost somewhere between wake and dream and trapped in that as well. Jean-Paul can only stare at first, shaken by the violence of Marc's nightmare. 

"Marc?" Jean-Paul says, voice a deafening crash in the quiet, where the only other sound is Marc's panicked breath. 

Marc shoots upright, as if the sound of Jean-Paul's voice unleashed him from bindings holding him paralysed on the bed. At first he stares at the tent wall, shaking so violently that Jean-Paul thinks the camp bed might collapse. His breathing is sharp, fast and shallow, and he turns slowly to look at Jean-Paul. 

Jean-Paul finds that he is frightened. He is a soldier, both of the Foreign Legion and of fortune, one who has lived a long and difficult life by the gun. He has had days where he didn't think he was going to live to see the sun go down. He does not get scared easily. And yet he finds himself looking at Marc and seeing Marc's red, puffy eyes and feeling actual fear, for the first time in a long time. A sharp, tight fear deep in his stomach, like sympathy pains.

Marc's eyes are wild and raw, glinting with light reflected from some angle that Jean-Paul can't determine that make them look as though they've captured some strange shard of the moon. He's coated in sweat, hair plastered to his forehead and he's shivering, teeth chattering in his skull. The tank top he's wearing is grey with sweat. His face is streaked with tears. Jean-Paul has seen men on their knees crying for their life, but Marc looks more scared than they did. 

"Marc?" Jean-Paul says again, because he doesn't know what else to say. 

"Frenchie?" Marc says, voice wavering. "Where are you?" 

"Libya. We're both in Libya, Marc. Are you alright?"

"Oh. I thought I was in the hospital."

"What hospital?" 

He doesn't know why he asked. It's not his business. He knows so little about Marc. They're not expected to know anything about each other, not anything real. He knows what beer Marc drinks and what music he likes and what burial rites need to he prefers. He doesn't even know what state Marc is from.

"The one Dad made me grow up in," Marc says. For a large man, he looks incredibly small, a splash of tanned skin and brown hair against a vast, blank stretch of white cloth. His voice sounds even smaller, almost frail. 

"Are you sick?" 

"Dad said it would make me get better, but I never did. I never got to leave until I ran away." Marc draws his legs up to his chest, clinging to them tight enough that his fingernails leave crescents in his skin. "I'm still sick. I'll die sick."

There's something wrong, but it's wrong in a way where the vastness of it is like the desert outside. Huge and lonely in a way that Jean-Paul cannot really ever fully understand, only a small figure, dwarfed by the scope and loneliness of Marc's suffering. He can only sit on one edge, looking on with a sympathy that makes his chest ache. He didn't know Marc was so hurt. He didn't know he cared so much. 

"I'm scared, Frenchie," Marc says.

"It… It's going to be ok."

Marc lets out a dry sob, curling up in on himself like he's trying to form a shield against the things attacking him from the outside. Old fears rising up from the grave to drag him back down into a dark, frightening place that he's clearly trying to haul himself out of, clinging on only by the tips of his fingers. His eyes dart wildly around the room, barely able to stay still for a second. He traces the wavering shape of a cloud drifting over the moon. When the cloud passes, light is thrown over his face again, colourless but shining with tears. 

Frenchie doesn't know what he can offer him. The issues aren't anything he can fix, and he knows so little about Marc that any advice would be nothing more than trite generalisations. But maybe that doesn't matter. Marc looks beyond advice at the moment; he's barely able to keep himself together long enough to stop crying. 

"I'm scared. I don't want to go back. I'm really… I'm really…" He clumsily wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. "Can you just… Can you just hold me, Frenchie? Please? I'm so fucking cold."

"Yes," Jean-Paul says. 

How the fuck is he supposed to say no? 

He opens the side of his sleeping bag and Marc somehow manages to uncoil himself from his rigid defensive pose with his arms around his legs, and creep across the floor of the tent towards Jean-Paul. He walks silently, his shoulders up like he's expecting an attack from any side. He still looks so small that when he crawls into the sleeping bag and the camp bed creaks under his weight, Jean-Paul is almost surprised by the size and weight of him.

Marc and Jean-Paul both lie on their sides; Jean-Paul throws the top of the bag over them. Marc presses himself against him, curling his head under Jean-Paul's chin, pushing in as close as he can get. Jean-Paul puts his arms around him and holds him, feels how much Marc is still shaking. 

Marc smells like sand and sweat and cigarettes. His eyes are wet with tears and leave stains on Jean-Paul's shirt. His hands grip onto Jean-Paul's sides with a force that brings to mind how strong this man really is. Strong, but shockingly, heartbreakingly vulnerable. 

"I never had any friends 'cept Steven and Jake," Marc says. 

"I'm your friend." 

Jean-Paul gently rubs a hand on Marc's back. Marc chokes down another sob and presses his face against Jean-Paul's breastbone so hard he could bruise. He stops shaking so violently. His skin begins to feel less frigid with cold sweat. 

"Sometimes I feel like I'm always dreaming. I don't know when the dream will be over."

"You need to go back to sleep. When you wake up and you see that desert sun, you'll know you're awake." 

"Thank you," Marc says. "Thank you Frenchie." 

Marc says nothing after that, only clings to Jean-Paul more. Jean-Paul lets him, reaching around to pull up the zip of the sleeping bag to try and hold them both inside, like a child making sure the blanket covers them so the monsters can't get through. 

They fall silent as Marc's breathing slowly becomes more steady, the shaking gasps fading into softer, calmer breaths. There's not much room for them both, but Jean-Paul finds he doesn't mind being crushed together. Mostly, the fact Marc came to him makes his heart ache in a way it hasn't for a long time. It would have been so easy for Marc to say nothing; so many times he must have kept a tight lid on everything inside him, only to talk about it now. To Jean-Paul. 

Jean-Paul curls his arms tight around Marc and closes his eyes, listening to the whisper of a breath in the dark. There is some soft sound on the horizon he can't identify; something distant outside the tent, a lonely howl of an unknown animal that rings in his mind until he falls into a sleep where he dreams of flying. 

In the morning they wake up at the same time, the stirring of one waking up the other. Neither says anything as they clamber out of the sleeping bag into the heat of the morning. They get dressed wearing each other's scent, still in silence. There's nothing to say. Anything they could say would shatter the moment, destroy the quiet power of it and make it something crass. When they leave the tent to break down camp, Jean-Paul touches Marc on the arm for a second, and Marc looks at him with gratitude in his eyes. 

That's all it takes. They both know. The secret is between them then, and Jean-Paul knows he will hold onto it forever.


End file.
